The Plant Health and Environment Department (SPE) of INRA provides financial support for 2 years for the research project 'EevolFus' leaded by Marie Foulongne-Oriol.
The EevolFus project aims to lay the foundations for a better understanding of the adaptive response of Fusarium graminearum to abiotic stress by studying the involvement  of mutational dynamics in the response to selection pressure throughout the fungus life cycle. This dynamic will be studied by an experimental evolution approach with a strategy Evolve & Resequence .

The selection pressure will be thermal stress to artificially mimic the effects of global warming. The appearance of mutations at the nucleotide level  will be studied on the whole genome by complete resequencing. In order to estimate the effect of successive multiplication cycles on the fitness of the strains, phenotyping of the derived generations will be carried out, for mycelial growth in dishes (by image analysis), the production of mycotoxins (HPLC and mass spectrometry) and aggressiveness on plants (artificial inoculation on wheat).

Expected results are indispensable prerequisites for a better understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms and evolutionary forces in action.